ASL Veteran

Your strategy for getting pentagon funding is all wrong . You need to be going after your congressman to get a congressional earmark. Just think how easy it would be to get funding for co play if you were operating out of Pennsylvania. Murtha could get you funding for co play with the stroke of his pen. The strategy needs to be to get Murtha playing CM, then if he demands co play he can make it happen.

The British army adopted the flintlock musket at least ten to fifteen years before the French did and were probably the first army to have completely switched over to the flintlock from the matchlock. The British army was the first army to use the screw elevating device for artillery sometime in 1750. There was a British unit of breech loading riflemen fighting during the American revolution. Congreve introduced rocket artillery to the British forces after British experience in India. Congreve also replaced the standard double bracket trail for artillery with the single pole structure (I forget the name). British soldiers used the new mini ball Rifles to great advantage in the Crimea while the Russians still used smooth bore muskets even though Russia was considered one of the most powerful militaries of the time - at least before the war started. British soldiers had breech loading rifles and were enthusiastic users of the Gatling gun when fighting the Zulus in the 1870s while Austria was still using muzzle loading rifles in their war against Prussian in 1866. Somebody invented the tank sometime during WW1 but I can't remember exactly who ...... . I think it's patently ridiculous to say that the British military has been neglected since the 1650s. There weren't even any social programs to spend money on before the 19th century and something like 75% of the national budget for all nations went towards their militaries. Perhaps you could say that about the post WW2 military, but then probably most European militaries were neglected post war since they could always rely on Uncle Sam to bail them out of a jam. The French have deployed troops overseas in many locations since WW2, but like the British most of these commitments were to ex colonies and don't require much as far as 'heavy' forces go. It really just depends on doctrine and what type of war you plan to fight. I think doctrinally the US, at least since WW2, has had a 'firepower' doctrine and the US force reflects that. UK forces may have a different doctrine so maybe the force mix is right for what they plan on doing.

I suspect that many of the players who enjoy playing against the AI are going to dive into the campaign fairly quickly because the campaign adds that element of role playing to it that is lacking in the free standing scenarios. Players who enjoy going up against other players will obviously need to be playing stand alones but if they are playing PBEM you won't get any feedback on them for a while. Naturally free standing scenarios will be played against the AI as well, but the campaign is probably the primary draw for the AI players and it's probably natural that you are getting quick feedback on that. I haven't got the Brits yet otherwise I would make some comments since I was complaining about the scenarios previously. I'm guessing that my Brits will be coming by land so hopefully they will arrive by the end of the week. For some reason playing against the AI for me is so de motivating that it's difficult for me to even complete a scenario let alone a campaign. No matter how challenging a scenario is with the AI it's just .... missing something for me when playing the AI.

Yeah, I can understand it. However it probably would have been incumbent upon your friend to resist the tempation to install the Brits module until you could have patched your game since your friend should have known prior to installing the Brits module that your games would be incompatible after he installed it. Even now your friend could theoretically uninstall his Brits module until you can patch your game up to 1.20 thus allowing you and your friend to carry on as before.

Here is the ASL Veteran theory on the great Adam banning episode of 2009 . Just before the last straw landed on the camel's back you may have noticed that Charles directly responded to one of Adam's observations regarding spotting. I have seldom, if ever, actually seen Charles post on any of the forums even though his post count is up in the mid 500s. For Adam it may have been like the wargaming equivalent of Michael Jackson talking to a fan (from beyond the grave ). I'm going to speculate that Adam got so excited at having his concerns addressed directly from "the jar" that when he started posting other concerns he became uncontrollably angry when another forum poster requested that he moderate his tone or even cease and desist. It would have been like putting Beggin strips out for your dog and then blocking the dog from eating them. It's BACON!!!! Adam was of the opinion that now that he was talking to the jar instead of just the 'front man' (Steve) nobody should get in his way because his many concerns would finally be addressed. Adam was clearly being highly disrespectful towards that other forum member and I'm sure that was a major contributing factor in the end result. That's my theory anyway. I hate to speculate on Adam's state of mind because he can't respond, but there it is.

I'm just saying that it would add a bit of spice to things that's all - sort of like how people like the wall jumping animation. Troops under fire aren't always cool as cucumbers and they won't act predictably all the time every time. I don't think someone would want to rely on some VC or MOH award winner to carry the day because it would basically be a semi random event. However it would be nice if something like that were possible rather than impossible. That's the kind of stuff that books are written about and would add some flavor. I was just reading through a bit of the Nomonhan battle and the Japanese made a tank attack on a Soviet artillery position in the middle of a thunderstorm at night with the lightning flashes helping to illuminate the Soviet positions. It was pouring rain so hard that the Japanese tankers had to wear their gas masks in order to breathe. Coolness factor close to a ten on that one if you could do a battle like that in CM. I'm as groggly as the next guy but dang it, I like cool stuff too!!

I don't see any spotting problems in the screen shots. I mean come on - they are just laying out there in the open with a huge ATGM launcher . The one issue I can't figure out is how Charles can post on a message board when he is a brain in a jar . Incidentally the thought occurred to me that with one to one infantry modeling it would be possible to have individual soldiers going 'berzerk' or 'heroic' under certain circumstances. That guy who charges the machine gun nest after he sees his buddy get killed and just decides that they aren't going to take it anymore. Just sayin'

Nice find. I downloaded the "Japanese Warfare" manual and will check it out.

Yeah, Betio island in the Tarawa Atoll is a good place to start if anyone doubts the tenacity of the Japanese fighting man. Here is a decent write up on the battle for Tarawa for the curious http://www.nps.gov/archive/wapa/indepth/extContent/usmc/pcn-190-003120-00/sec1.htm I actually thought it was 2600 Japanese defenders against about 35000 marines and army personnel backed up by 3 battleships, 5 cruisers, 9 destroyers, carrier dive bombers, and B24 bombers and the invasion basically turned into a fiasco. We did manage to take the island that's probably small enough to entirely fit on a large CM sized map in about four days though . On top of that the Japanese are on an island with no possibility of escape or rescue - as in all those island battles. Their offensives in Malaya, Burma, and the Philipines were carried out against numerically larger forces - several times larger. I believe when Singapore surrendered there were more British defenders than Japanese attackers. The problem was that Japanese commanders became a bit too predictable so when the allies adapted the Japanese didn't adapt too. The US had way more firepower to fling around when doing our thing so that didn't make it any easier on them.

Jon S is generally pretty specific so I'm going to assume by Pacific he literally meant Pacific Islands etc and not China Burma India. Regarding British troops though there was a rather large Japanese invasion of India in March 1944 resulting in the battle of Imphal and Kohima. China, Burma, and the Phillipines had full on city fights between Japanese troops and the allies. It's really just a matter of if the Japanese forces are 'interesting' enough I guess because you can get basically any kind of fighting that you want out of it. Temperate, Jungle, Arctic, city fights, even some tank battles, it's all basically there. The thing about CM is that the player is in command of the Japanese infantry and man for man I would stack the courage of the individual Japanese infantryman up against that of any other nation. Their equipment is a bit sub par and their leadership is probably a little sub par too. You as the player don't have to deal with the leadership thing much though except as modifiers etc and their big squads do have some decent firepower with those little knee mortars. Pretty easy to get tree bursts with a knee mortar in the jungle. Sometimes I've idly wondered how a Japanese infantry battalion re equipped with MP40s and led by German officers would have done in Stalingrad .

Your question was already answered, but if you are interested in more info this link gives a decent general history of the battle with a lot of "further reading" material at the end. http://www.history.army.mil/brochures/aleut/aleut.htm

Oh yeah, and I can't forget that the Japanese have a proclivity to hang out in cave complexes. I couldn't even imagine how hard something like that would be to make work in CM . My guess is that it couldn't be done. There are a lot of interesting things Japanese soldiers do too - like stick the muzzle of their rifles in their mouths when it looks like the end is near. Banzai charges. No quarter, no prisoners. Stabbing Marines with Samurai Swords. Strapping explosives on a soldier's body and having him run up to take out those pesky US tanks like a human Sagger ATGM. Bamboo fields. Rice paddies. Snipers tied to trees. There are plenty of good campaigns that could be done though without the cave complex beach landing type stuff. Both invasions of the Phillipines. Guadalcanal of course. Burma, Singapore, India. Yeah, I would love to fight in CM as the Japanese. It would be an entirely new gaming experience if done well.

I second that!! I would guess that Japanese would take a tremendous amount of work though because virtually all the terrain would be different along with the Japanese obviously. That and the Marines would have to be modeled. Night combat would have to be fully fleshed out much more than it is currently. The Japanese trained constantly for night attacks. I would love to take those big thirteen man Japanese squads out for a spin on Guadalcanal. Maybe take some Japanese tanks in Malaya and overrun a bunch of British Indian troops. Maybe the terrain and building work load would be reduced if someone really does a Vietnam gamette as they would have to make all new PTO terrain for that so it could probably port over. Everyone would want to see Japanese officers brandishing their Samurai Swords of course. I'm sure there would be a call for beach landings too, but it's totally unnecessary to model that for Pacific combat. Digging even deeper into the realm of the unlikely it would be nice to have Chinese forces modeled as well as Russians for the Nomonhan border battles in 1939 and their later invasion of Manchuria.

I've got to think that a Korean war ... I'll call it a Gamette .... for the 1950s would be relatively simple to make after the Bagration title comes out. Most, if not all, of the equipment used by both sides was used in WW2 and the American and British TO&Es would be made already. The North Korean equipment would already be made in the Bagration title. The ROK, NK, and Chinese uniforms and TO&Es would need to be made. You would need to make buildings suitable for Korea and a few planty type things. It seems like half the work would already be completed by previous titles and modules though.

I'm thinking that the individually rendered squaddies have something to do with that difference now. In CMx1 you just had a counter ticking off casualties and the animation might lean back a little when a casualty is taken. In CMx2 you actually see them dropping individually. At least they aren't screaming "MEDIC" while they lay on the ground wounded.

Well spoken. I'm looking forward to the future offerings from those who were just recognized.

I was trying to let the issue drop. For whatever reason you seem to be taking great offense at my extremely mild criticisms of the scenario offerings from the CD. The fact is that nobody who has made a scenario offering on any of the CDs has had to 'sell' their scenarios on their own merits. Not you. Not Paper Tiger. Not George MC. Nobody. You may have your buddy look it over and say 'yeah, looks great' but the market hasn't told you whether your stuff is good or not. The customer is unforgiving. Steve has to deal with public criticism of his and Charle's work on a daily basis. Steve knows whether his work is good or not because people choose to buy it or not buy it. For the most part he has handled criticism well and he has developed a thick skin. The fact is that when I buy the next module I will be paying for whatever you decide to put on there and I don't have a choice about it. If I want to buy the Brits module I am buying every scenario on there so my only suggestion was that every scenario that comes on the disk be at least playable by everyone who purchases the Brits module in whatever way they please. Almost none of the scenarios from CMSF or Marines are playable head to head and many of them aren't even complete from the Red side if I want to play Red vs AI. What you are trying to tell me is that I'm supposed to buy whatever you give me and I'm going to like it regardless. My response to that is: Steve, let's get some minimum standards here so that everyone who pays good money for your Brits Module can play every scenario offering that comes with the CD in whatever way they choose to play it. If I want to play Red vs AI then I want to play every scenario as Red vs AI - after all I did pay for them. If I want to play Blue vs AI then I want to play Blue vs AI in every scenario. If I want to play head to head, then I want to play head to head in every scenario. I wasn't making a snide remark about your scenarios. I was stating a fact. If your scenario isn't playable head to head then I'm probably not going to play it. I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings but I'm not in the business of making people happy for something that I pay for and don't like. If I had a choice I probably wouldn't pay for it at all, but I don't have a choice so all I can do is skip it. I hope that's clear enough.

Damn, I guess I shouldn't have attempted to expand on what we were discussing here. Paper Tiger: Do'h - sorry about the renaming buddy. Normal Dude: Geez buddy - go make whatever you want. I'll just skip those when they come out. No need to lose any sleep over it.

lol, no, I wasn't taking it that way at all. Your statement sounded like you were now one of the CMSF beta testers and that you would no longer be able to play scenarios with the peasants . This was disappointing because I haven't finished laying the wood to you in Rahadnak Valley Search.

I don't know what happens. Obviously I'm not privy to the internal workings of BFC. I can only judge by what I see. If you double check my initial post about a scenario master though it was prefaced with the following In other words, I was just tossing stuff out there without any regard as to the current structure since I wasn't making a comparative statement. In any event, Birdstrike already basically confirmed my opinion with his earlier response. If what I proposed was being done currently then Birdstrike wouldn't have felt compelled to say that my proposal was a horrible idea . Either you are operating under a different set of rules than Birdstrike is, or you are being deliberately obtuse. Scenario design either is or was (pre Brit module) decentralized with each designer doing his or her own thing with testing done by peers. He emphatically stated that nobody touches each designer's stuff. What I spelled out was something different entirely. My suggestion imposed a centralized structure on scenario design with all testing carried out by the scenario master and his or her selected testing teams. In other words, the scenario designer (other than the scenario master) wouldn't be involved in the testing and tweaking process after the scenario was submitted to the scenario master as 'complete' by the designer. There haven't been any scenario masters listed as employees on the website so unless Steve is fulfilling that function himself (he may be), then my proposed structure would be a change in the way things are done now. There is no way that I could know one way or another if that would be the right 'fit' for BFC because I haven't seen the operation. It's just a standard centralized way of doing things that may or may not be an improvement over how it's done now. Of course this whole discussion is rather pointless anyway since I'm sure Steve has his own ideas how to run a business, and he's been doing okay so far . I'm just an efficiency nut at work and I can't help myself sometimes. By the way, regarding your common sense statement earlier, humans thought it was common sense for thousands of years that the sun went around the earth. We all know how that turned out.

You are thinking of things from an artist's perspective and I'm thinking of things from a business perspective. Just as authors have editors for their books that get published, so too a scenario designer should have a 'scenario master' overlooking their work if it's going to be put out on the CD. It's for quality control purposes and to ensure that the product meets whatever standards BFC wants to impose. It doesn't mean that the scenario master necessarily would make alterations, but that they could if they deemed it necessary (or at least sent it back for revision). Having one person overseeing all the testing and balancing for all scenarios adds consistency in an area that really requires it. It's just a simple 'gateway' concept which is pretty common out there.

Hmmm, I'm seeing a 'we' and an 'us' in there. It appears that you have been entirely absorbed into the BFC collective.

Steve's post has the ASL Veteran stamp of approval (pulls out medallion stamp) "Kerchunk"

It looks like Mishga is on board with making a scenario. I have provided her with the 'muse'. Other than what Mishga asks me specifically, the scenario will be entirely her own creation. When she's done with it I'll send it to you and if you are 'ahem' up for it you can choose to play the scenario as either side.

Nobody just 'gets' a company shirt. Company shirts can only be earned! As long as we are playing 'fantasy BFC Human Resources Rep' then I'll go ahead and spell out what role the 'Scenario Master' would have in my imaginary high rise BFC office located in mid town Manhattan on 57th and Lexington (which coincidentally was used as the outside of the Green Goblin's HQ in the Spiderman movie). Steve and Charles would have offices on the top floor of course. Okay, so the Scenario Master would be responsible for creating somewhere between one third and one half of all scenarios for every module and title as well as one campaign. If the Scenario Master needs assistance in producing any of his or her assigned scenarios or campaigns he or she could outsource some portions of their projects to those beta testers who are willing to lend a hand. So, if there is a beta tester who is willing to make maps for the Scenario Master then that saves the Scenario Master from making every map from scratch etc. As to the other half or two thirds of scenarios for each module and title, those would still be done by those scenario makers who are currently building them. The only difference would be that the 'Scenario Master' would be in charge of reviewing and approving any scenarios that have been produced by the beta testers. The Scenario Master would have a free hand in making any modifications and adjustments to all those scenarios and once the beta tester submitted the scenario to the Scenario Master the scenario would then 'become' the Scenario Master's (although the original maker would still get full credit in the briefing for the design of course). If the submitted scenario still needs too much work then the Scenario Master would send the scenario back to the designer who submitted it and request that the appropriate changes be made. So the Scenario Master has a quality control function as well as original production. Standard scenario making procedure would be that once the Scenario Master has completed a scenario (or is satisfied with a submitted scenario) they should run through the scenario at least one time as each side vs the AI to make sure that everything in the scenario works properly from a technical standpoint. The Scenario Master would then send the completed scenario to a group of beta testers - maybe four or five - who would all then play the scenario vs the AI as both sides as many times as practical and would give appropriate feedback to the Scenario Master as to playability, victory conditions, and balance. After making any modifications the Scenario Master would then put the modified scenario back out and get feedback again. At the same time, if practicable, the Scenario Master would have beta testers play the scenarios against each other. If it is small enough to be played real time then it's possible to have the testers play all the way to completion multiple times and to give their assessments and suggestions. If it's too big for real time play then you would probably have to have them play at least part of the way through PBEM and give an assessment once they reached the scenario's 'tipping point'. The advantage that a CD scenario should have over a community scenario would be the resources that could be poured into it. It's hard for a regular gamer in the community to have an active scenario tester pool or even to get any feedback at all, but BFC already has a ready pool of testers available for that.